As they entered the banquet hall, quite a few people took the initiative to greet Sophie Thorne. lody Sumrs listened quietly from the side; they were all asking Sophie about her fiancé Ronan Rhodes’s family business in indoor agriculture and livestock.
’The rich really do have a keen sense of sll,’ lody thought. ’They’re much better than ordinary people at sniffing out the next big thing. It seems all these wealthy heirs want to get a piece of the pie by probing for information.’
lody took in the banquet hall as she listened.
Electricity prices were astronomical now. Ordinary people only turned on their air conditioners for a short while when the heat beca unbearable, and they couldn’t bear to turn on the lights at night. Many people had even unplugged their routers and TV boxes just to save that tiny bit of standby power.
Many of the poor couldn’t even afford their electricity bills. They had no choice but to default, and the power grid would restrict them to the lowest usage tier. Plenty of people had collapsed from heatstroke after their quota ran out.
But here in this banquet hall, the central air was running, brilliant chandeliers cast a bright glow, and the exquisitely arranged tables held delicate vases filled with fresh, tender flowers.
lody picked up a glass of fruit wine from a tray and quietly slipped through the hall, stopping by the door to look out at the villa’s back garden.
In this scorching weather, not a single sprout could survive in the fields. Yet the backyard of Zane Simmons’s villa was filled with all kinds of flowers and plants, looking as beautiful as a vibrant oil painting under the moonlight and ambient lighting. lody stared at the garden, lost in thought, feeling as if this place and the world outside were two different realities.
As lody was spacing out, a young man who looked about eighteen or nineteen approached her. "Are you here alone, miss? Could I get to know you?"
lody turned to look at him. He had a delicate, handso, baby face, with honey-colored eyes frad by thick lashes that made him look vaguely like he had mixed heritage.
Seeing lody look his way, the baby-faced young man blinked and offered her a friendly smile.
lody, however, suddenly clenched the wine glass in her hand. She knew this person!
In her last life, when lody had just returned to the Lancaster family, Elaine Hughes had also taken her to a few banquets. At those events, lody was frequently bullied and tornted by Silas and Sylvia Lancaster’s friends.
The young man before her was one of Silas Lancaster’s friends. His na was Hugh Hayes, and his sister, Clara Hayes, was friends with Sylvia Lancaster.
The first ti Hugh Hayes t lody in her past life, he tricked her into going to the backyard and pushed her into the swimming pool. It caused lody to catch a cold and run a fever for days.
Afterward, thanks to Silas and Sylvia Lancaster’s false testimony, Elaine Hughes and Robert Lancaster both believed lody had slipped and fallen in on her own. No matter how she tried to explain, it was useless.
Emboldened by his initial success, Hugh secretly drugged lody’s drink at another party. He even called over several strange n to drag her into a room to film her. lody only managed to escape by jumping from the third floor.
She reported it to the police afterward, but the incident was covered up by the combined efforts of the Lancaster and Hayes families.
As mories of her past life flooded back, a fire ignited in lody’s heart. She looked at Hugh Hayes coldly and answered, "No, you can’t."
Hugh was taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to reject him so decisively. After all, very few won ever turned down his advances.
But he didn’t get angry. He kept smiling and said, "But you’re so beautiful, miss. I just want to be your friend." Hugh’s baby face was a picture of harmless, innocent sincerity.
Looking at his smile, lody felt a sudden, inexplicable chill. He had smiled just like that in her last life, right before pushing her into the pool.
"But you’re ugly, so we can’t be friends," lody said before turning and striding away toward the villa’s back garden. She was afraid if she stayed any longer, she wouldn’t be able to resist splashing the fruit wine in her hand all over his face.
Hugh froze, the smile on his face slowly vanishing as a trace of sinister cruelty flickered in his honey-colored eyes.
"What’s wrong with you?" Silas Lancaster walked over, looking at Hugh standing there by himself, and asked with so confusion.
Silas Lancaster and Hugh Hayes weren’t part of Zane Simmons’s circle, and they hadn’t been invited to this gathering. However, a friend of Zane’s knew Hugh’s older brother, Raymond Hayes, and had invited him. Raymond couldn’t make it, but Silas and Hugh were so bored at ho that they decided to tag along and crash the party.
A cold smirk played on Hugh’s lips. He silently watched lody’s retreating back, nonchalantly swirling the wine in his glass. "It’s nothing," he replied. "Just ran into a worthless bitch who doesn’t know her place."
Hugh had initially approached lody because he saw she was dressed plainly but was also very beautiful. He figured she was a social climber looking for a sugar daddy at the party. He never expected her to dare to disrespect him like that.
If he didn’t have to give Zane Simmons face and couldn’t cause a scene, he would have had soone teach that ignorant bitch a harsh lesson on the spot!
Silas followed Hugh’s gaze toward the backyard, only to see soone completely unexpected—
lody Sumrs!
Silas froze for a second. When he recovered, a surge of rage shot to his head. Without a second thought, he stord over and confronted her.
"What are you doing here?! Why are you here!?"
lody frowned at the sound of his voice. It was all too familiar. She didn’t even want to turn her head.
’Running into two damn pests in a row has really soured my mood. I knew I shouldn’t have co.’
Silas Lancaster frowned at lody. He couldn’t figure out why she would be here!
Silas asked probingly, "lody Sumrs, you talk a big ga about not wanting to co back to the Lancaster family, but are you out here swindling people using your status as a Lancaster daughter?!"
lody turned to face him and replied with a cold laugh, "A Lancaster daughter? What a jinxed title. How shaless are you people to keep trying to brand with it? Why is your family so desperate to latch onto ? The Lancasters are about to go bankrupt. Don’t let your family’s bad luck rub off on !"
The scorn in lody’s eyes stung Silas. He gritted his teeth. "Then how did you get in here? Is a party like this sowhere a country bumpkin like you can be?!"
"Or could it be..." Silas squinted, carefully sizing lody up. He stared at her beautiful face and said with disdain, "Or could it be... you’re living the good life now by hooking up with n? Did your sugar daddy bring you in?"
Believing he had discovered the truth, Silas cursed angrily, "lody Sumrs, I can’t believe you’ve fallen this far. You’d rather sell your body than co back to the Lancaster family? You’re a joke!"
It wasn’t that Silas wanted lody to return to the Lancaster family, but he knew that Elaine Hughes had recently gone to lody’s school specifically to find her, only to leave without getting her current address.
And Sylvia Lancaster was sad that lody wouldn’t attend her wedding, and had secretly cried to him about it.
Silas had kept a ntal record of Elaine and Sylvia’s pain. He planned to settle the score with lody, item by item. He had been frustrated that he couldn’t find her, but now, unexpectedly, here she was.
lody let out a cold laugh and retorted, "Mr. Lancaster, you seem to be an expert on the subject. Is it because your whole family is in the business, so you assu everyone else is, too?"
lody mimicked Silas’s disdainful expression and clicked her tongue twice. "TSK TSK. Now, Mr. Lancaster, that’s not right. You can’t just assu everyone in the world is like that just because your family is in that profession. Do you really love projecting so much?"
Silas flew into a rage. He roared at lody in disbelief, "How can you talk like that?! Do you have any idea how many places Mom went to look for you? Do you know how sad Sylvia was that you refused to attend her wedding?"
lody knew perfectly well that Sylvia wanted her at the wedding just to flaunt her love with Ethan Sutton, and Elaine wanted her ho simply because she couldn’t stand being defied.
lody gave Silas a mocking smile. "I get it now. Your family is just as pathetic as you are, all of you desperate to cling to ."
Enraged, Silas reached out to grab lody’s hair—
lody had already pulled the taser from her dress pocket, ready to give Silas another electrifying lesson.
But before she could make a move, two people suddenly ran over and stood in front of Silas.
"What’s going on, Mr. Lancaster? Why are you bullying a young lady here?"
"That’s right, Mr. Lancaster. Let’s talk things out. You’re a grown man, why are you about to get physical with a girl?"
The two n were impeccably dressed and carried themselves with an air of sophistication. They were clearly young masters from wealthy families.
lody sighed internally. ’These two are really cramping my style.’ Her experiences from her past life taught her that Silas Lancaster was not soone you could reason with. He operated on his own twisted logic, which allowed him to commit evil acts against innocent people while believing he was in the right. With soone like that, you could only beat him into submission.
Silas looked at lody’s cold, mocking face, and the fury surged to his head. He snapped at the two n in front of him, "This woman is my family’s illegitimate daughter! She’s disrespecting my parents, so of course I can teach her a lesson! This is our family business, what’s it to you!?"
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